Trust and fertility dynamics

Arnstein Aassve, Francesco Billari and LÈa Pessin

No 55, Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi

Abstract: We argue that fertility trends in advanced societies are in part driven by differences in trust. The argument builds around the idea that trust implies individuals and couples being willing to outsource traditional family activities to other individuals outside their own family. Trust is therefore seen as a catalyser for the process of increased female labour force participation, the diffusion of childcare facilities, and hence a halt to the continuing fertility decline. Support of this hypothesis is drawn from the World Values Survey and European Values Survey. We present evidence both from country-level regressions and from a series of multilevel analyses. We find that trust by itself is positively associated with fertility over recent decades. Moreover, trust interacts with womenís education. In particular, as higher education for women has expanded, which traditionally is seen as a robust predictor for lower fertility, trust is a precondition for achieving higher fertility among those women with very high education.

Keywords: Generalized trust; low fertility; womenís education; outsourcing; multilevel models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-evo and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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